Posted by Frank Capilla
a resident of Deer Oaks/Twelve Oaks
on May 3, 2013 at 12:13 pm

I have personally known Bill Hirst, as his client and a friend for over 40 years. He's a good man and a good friend. This is not a case of who was right or who was wrong; it was a case of who could hold out the longest. After spending almost $500,000, Bill knew he was on the winning side of this; however was forced to throw in the towel or jeopardize his savings and pension. The family involved in this matter never filed any charges; the IRS never lost any money and Bill never profited from this in any way. This is a classic example of the Government (IRS) being able to grind a person down until he runs out of money, forcing him to plea bargain and then claiming to win the case. Very sad indeed.
Please don't judge Bill Hirst by this one unfortunate incident, judge him by his years of good work in the city of Pleasanton, starting out as city attorney and his years of his good legal work in private practice. Bill was a long time member of Rotary and did a lot of charitable work for our community. He was always there to help a friend. Bill currently serves as the chairman of the Pioneer Cemetery committee. Our committee is trying to make improvements on our Cemetery and turn it in to the nicest park in town.
Bill Hirst is a good man and a dear friend and I'm standing behind him!
Frank Capilla

Posted by honest lawyer
a resident of Foothill Farms
on May 3, 2013 at 2:55 pm

FC, you are WRONG about this -- "This is not a case of who was right or who was wrong". It most certainly is.
What he did violated the law and put him in the crosshairs of the IRS. It is not a question of whether he profited or whether one red cent went unpaid to the IRS. It is the law and he broke it. Any attorney knows better than that. He made a mistake and then he lied about it. He got off lucky considering what the IRS could have done to him.

I do not profess to understand all the reported (and/or possibly omitted) information as related in the above PW write up. We had Bill Hirst as our family attorney, who has been of assistance to us for many, many years. We appreciated his advice and his caring attitude.
I agree with Mr. Capilla's comments above, to judge Bill by his years of good work, which is what counts the most.
Interesting to note, though, is that the comment "It is the law and he broke it. Any attorney knows better than that" … (oh really?) …comes from an "HONEST LAWYER", who is so "honest", that he rather not divulged his name.

"the signature on the deeds was that of the decedent; and that he did not forge a signature on the deeds"

It shouldn't cost 500,000 dollars to show that the signatures on the documents were those of the client rather than the attorney. For a fraction of that amount you could get even a lazy investigator to round up examples of the client's signature on a wide variety of documents. On the other hand, a good handwriting expert is hard to get by if you're not really, really at the top of your game when you're trying a con.